I Take it Back

I was planning to write a SPOILER-riddled post tonight about what's wrong with Smallville. This was early on in tonight's episode during yet another scene between Lana and Jason that I could care less about. “Blah blah stone, blah blah relationship, blah blah bleachers, blah blah that day we went to Shanghai from Kansas in a day blah blah” who cares. Though they phased out the weekly K-villain formula that plagued it through the first two seasons and got more into building the mythology and the complex relationships between the characters, this season has alternated between promising and Dawsoning. I understand the nature of the show and have from the start. In a brilliant move, producers came up with a series that would get comic book geeks to watch yet another hour-long teen drama subtly promoting the latest CDs at the end while at the same time enticing the Dawson's crowd to watch a superhero show. Worlds would collide and we'd all find that deep down, we're not that different. But the superhero thing gradually became secondary, and since the writers have said we'll never see Superman, that this show has a “no flights; no tights” policy, there was little hope. Now and then there'd be a burst of superspeed or plot development based on Clark super-hearing a conversation far away, but those were brief reminders of who the show was about before it focused on the issues that plague your average teen, like juggling classes and running your own successful coffee lounge while still having time to get to the barn and care for your prize pony and wonder why your boyfriend was so secretive and doubt that it was because he was an alien with special gifts.

This season started off promisingly enough. After clicking on to the fact that viewers were tired of Clark and Lana conversations in a barn made extra-dramatic by some pop single blaring over a mundane discussion, writers shipped her off to Paris and him off to the Phantom Zone. Clark returned and flew in a spectacularly Matrix-y fashion, but he “wasn't himself” because of his birth-father's hypnosis or some crap, and so couldn't fly. Every season he's learned a new power. Season one he discovered X-ray vision. Season two gave him heat vision. Last year he developed super-hearing. This season is almost over and they still haven't given him his next power, nor do they count the one-time flight. The highest point has been the addition of Erica Durance as Lois Lane. She's witty, sarcastic and beautiful, and the way she and Clark play off one another is refreshing after the Clark/Lana puppy love. As for Lana, she returned from Paris with a new boyfriend and a tattoo of a Kryptonian symbol. That sounds cooler than it is since all they've done with it is make it somehow the bridge that allows a witch ancestor of Lana's(also played by Kristin Kreuk conveniently enough) to occasionally take possession of her. She's searching for these three stones I speculate will create the Fortress of Solitude. To her they're stones of power. And while it was cool that her first encounter with Clark added Superman's other weakness, magic, to this mythos, it's annoying to hear characters talk so matter-of-factly about it. A typical conversation between Lana and her boyfriend now is about finding these rocks before “Isabelle takes possession of you again!” O....K...

Tonight was no different. There was a vaguely interesting story about Lois' sister coming to town. Cut to Lana and Jason's apartment which has been ransacked and the one stone they found missing. They have a talk about how life was simpler when they were just dating and decide to just “forget” about the stones and lead a normal life. We wish. I found myself rolling my eyes and found myself so very tired. Lost is SO freaking good that I'm hanging on to this show by the barest of threads, hoping it goes somewhere. I tape it during Lost, watch it during intermissions of Alias(which after a few weak episodes was AWESOME the last two weeks), and finish it up sometime after Alias. It's not something I watch; it's something I GET THROUGH. Some episodes have been great this season, especially a pair with the return of Clark's teleporting femme fatale from last season and a development with one of his close friends. And Lois; never forget Lois. But the Lana stuff in between has been a chore. Tonight was no different, and when I saw him running fast near the end of the show it was like it was thrown in as a reminder that this isn't just Dawson, earlier 45 minutes be damned. At one point near the end, Lois and her sister are being held in the back of a moving tractor trailer. Clark zips on to a bridge and as the truck passes under, uses his hearing to hear them talking inside. Let's assume it was a LEAD truck and not that the writers wanted to use one of the newer powers. As the truck passed under I expected him to leap off on to it, but the camera pulled back and showed it in the distance. I figured he was going to run and catch it, but instead he runs and does a spectacular LEAP in slow motion, and lands on the roof! At this point I changed my mind about bashing the show; THIS is what I want to see! He raced to the cabin where the driver(apparently figuring someone was running on his roof since what else could it be on a highway in the middle of a field?) begins shooting through the roof. We're treated to an awesome angle of Clark hanging on with one hand as the bullets glance off him. He punches through and subdues the bad guy. As an epilogue, we get a discussion between Clark and Lex about bloodties since Lois was in trouble because of some shady doings on the part of her rival sister. Lex pointed out that blood means nothing and how Clark's adopted parents were more family than Lex's biological father was to him. He went on to say how Clark was a brother to him, and the writers brought back another dynamic between the future archenemies that had long been missing. To think I was going to write a critical post!

And then it ended with Lana going out on a balcony to look at her shiny rock. I take it back.